MARLBOROUGH AND OTHER POEMS - 1919 - PREFACE - THE call for a new edition of these poems gives an opportunity for issuing them in a form which is intended to be definitive. They are now arranged in four groups according to subject. It is true that all of them perhaps might be described by the title of one of these groups, as poems of life and thought. But some owe their inspiration directly to nature-to the wind-swept downs which the author loved and which he looked upon as wise as well aS wide a few reflect the experiences of school life yet others show how his spirit faced the . adventure of war and death. Within each group the poems are printed, as nearly as may be, in the order of their composition, the. title-poem being restored to its proper chronological place. When the date, exact or approximate, is known, it has been given in those cases in which the date specifies the day of the month, it has been taken from the authors manuscript. A single piece of imaginative prose is included amongst th5 poems. Other passages of prose were added to the third edition with the view of illustrating ideas occurring in the poems and prominent in the authors mind. With the exception of a v a 3 few sentences from an early essay, these prose passages are all taken fro familiar. letters. To the present edition a few notes have been appended, P in which some topical allusions are explained and what is known about the origin of the separate pieces is told. The frontispiece is from a drawing in chalks by Mr Cecil Jameson. Of the author personally, and of what he was to his family and his friends, I do not speak. Yet I may quote the phrase used by a German lady in whose house he had been living for three months. The time with him, she wrote, was like a holiday and, a feast-day. Many have felt what she put into words though it was the graver moods of his mind that, for. the most part, sought expression in his poems. I may also put on record here the main facts concerning his short life. He was born i t Old Aberdeen-on 19th May 1895. His father was then a professor in the University of Aberdeen, and he was of Scottish descent , on both sides. From rgoo onwards his home was in Cambridge. He was educated at Marlborough College, which he entered in September 1908 and . left in December 1913, after obtaining a scholarship at University College, Oxford. Owing to the war he never went into residence at the UniverSity. After leaving school he spent a little more than six months in Germany, first at Schwerin in Mecklenburg and afterwards, for the summer D vi session, at the University of Jena. He was on a walking tour on the banks of the Moselle when the European war broke out. He was put in prison at Trier on the 2nd August, but released the same night with orders to leave the country. After some adventures he reached home on the 6th, and at once applied for a commission in the anny. He was gazet ted Second Lieutenant in the Seventh Service Battalion of the kuffolk Regiment before the end of the month, ieutgnant in November, and Captain in. the following August. He was sent to France with his battalion on 30th May 1915, and served for some months in the trenches round Ploegsteert... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.